Yahoo Mail MCP for Windows — Read Only

This package connects Claude Desktop on Windows to Yahoo Mail for searching and reading. It deliberately exposes no tools for sending, deleting, moving, marking, starring, or otherwise changing messages.

What stays on the computer

index.db stores sender, recipients, subject, date, size, flags, folder and message UID. It does not store message bodies. A body is fetched from Yahoo only when mail_read is used and is then returned to Claude for processing.

The Yahoo app password is stored through Python keyring, which uses Windows Credential Manager. It is not written to Claude's JSON configuration.

Requirements

Windows 10 or 11
Claude Desktop
Python 3.10 or newer (Python 3.12 recommended)
Internet access
A Yahoo-generated app password

Git is not required for this downloadable package.

Installation

Extract the ZIP to a permanent folder, for example C:\Users\YourName\Documents\yahoo-mail-mcp-readonly.
In that folder, right-click setup-windows.ps1 and choose Run with PowerShell. If Windows blocks scripts, open PowerShell in the folder and run:
```
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\setup-windows.ps1
```
Enter your full Yahoo address.
At Yahoo Account Security, create a separate app password named Claude Yahoo Read Only. Paste that generated password when prompted. Do not use your normal Yahoo password.
Fully quit Claude Desktop from the system tray, then reopen it.

The installer creates a private Python environment, installs dependencies, stores the app password in Windows Credential Manager, tests the IMAP login, and merges the server into Claude's existing configuration.

First prompts in Claude

Use these in order:

Check my Yahoo Mail connection using mail_status.
List my Yahoo folders.
Sync my Yahoo INBOX headers with deep=true and max_messages=20000.
Find messages from Ryanair in my INBOX.
Read the relevant messages and extract flight date, route and booking reference.

Run mail_sync separately for other folders such as Archive or a Ryanair folder. Yahoo can limit a simple search to 10,000 results, so deep=true is important for a mailbox covering many years. Increase max_messages only when needed.

Available tools

Tool	Access
`mail_status`	Test connection and show index status
`mail_folders`	List folders
`mail_sync`	Download headers into the local index
`mail_search`	Search indexed headers or Yahoo body text
`mail_read`	Retrieve one message body and attachment names

All IMAP folder selections use read-only mode. Even opening a message through this connector cannot mark it as read.

Remove access

Run uninstall-windows.ps1, then delete the app password from Yahoo Account Security. Removing the Yahoo app password is the definitive way to revoke the connector's access.

Privacy notes

The software runs locally, but email content requested through a tool is supplied to Claude so it can answer.
Anyone able to use your signed-in Windows account may be able to run the connector under your identity.
Back up important mail independently. This connector is not a backup tool.

This is a read-only adaptation of mithun2k5/yahoo-mail-mcp, distributed under its MIT licence. The original project is not affiliated with Yahoo or Anthropic.